AfriGeneas Adoption Forum

Adoptee Seek Open Records

Not knowing your medical history is a disadvantage for most adoptees. It becomes more of a downfall when an adoptee gets ill. Read David Vaughan story:

David Vaughan has a medical condition -- "I get the shakes," he says -- and the doctors would like to make a better diagnosis: They want to know his family's medical history.
Vaughan, 36, can't provide it.

Adopted as an infant in the early 1970s and reared in Raleigh, he knows nothing of his birth parents or his biological background.

Under North Carolina law, the state keeps secret the original birth certificates of adoptees, including Vaughan's, sealing off the names of birth parents and the locations of the births. New certificates are printed to show only adoptive parents and where they lived at the time of adoption.